African American residents of this small Virginia town are determined to block a Wegmans warehouse

[BeckyDem]

Tyrese Coleman with Melody Schreiber

Wed, August 4, 2021, 2:32 PM·20 min read

The early December skies were foreboding as the protesters shivered in the chill outside a Wegmans grocery store. Still, they marched and held their signs high: "Wetlands over Wegmans," "Not in my backyard," "#Save Brown Grove!!!"

Among them were my cousins Renada Harris, 40, and Bonnica Cotman, 50. I've known them all my life, and I had never imagined them as activists, yet here the two sisters were, among the leaders of the group. In the past few months, I'd watched them go all-in trying to save our childhood home, Brown Grove, a historically Black community in Hanover County, Va., about 17 miles north of downtown Richmond. Brown Grove is facing, as they see it, the biggest existential threat of its 150-year history: the construction of a 1.1 million-square-foot, $175 million Wegmans distribution center.


Last summer, Renada and Bonnica watched as protesters marched through Richmond, demanding justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue was painted with graffiti, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy headquarters went up in flames. The city that was once the seat of the Confederate States of America proclaimed a new era. Now the sisters felt inspired to make their own calls for justice.

The group outside the Wegmans store had traveled from a "drive-in" - a sit-in that, because of the pandemic, took place in cars - about 18 miles away at the Brown Grove Baptist Church, the beating heart of the historic neighborhood. Protesters from adjacent communities came, too, including Chris French, an environmental consultant who has helped lead the fight. The group peaked at 75 or so people, the organizers recall, but they were heartened that anyone had braved the cold, covid and the lingering fear - held over from before the civil rights era by many Black residents - of speaking out against White people and the retaliation that could follow.

"A lot of people in the neighborhood, the older people, they still clean somebody's house," says Renada, a hairstylist and owner of a salon with her other sister, Kimberlyn Washington. "Things have not changed that much. They've kind of gotten stuck in that realm of 'better respect those White people.' "

https://news.yahoo.com/african-american-residents-small-virginia-183214831.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw&tsrc=twtr

[Karadeniz]

1. I hope that whoever approved this will have a change of heart. SOOOO sick and tired of everything

and everyone being sold down the river!!!!

[BeckyDem]

2. Me too, same old story around the country. The victims are almost always the same too.